In Flight and in Flux

I did an audible yelp when Nike first told me way back last summer that they would be collaborating with sacai. I could already imagine the coming together of these two entities, both similarly obsessed with fabrication and innovation , albeit operating on vastly different scales. Now that the eight-piece capsule NikeLab collection has been unveiled, I can finally bleat on and on about it. I know the word “synergy” is a rubbish ad-land word that can sound like a media cliche but it fully applies in this instance to the way Chitose Abe from sacai has gone through Nike’s archives to find icons to twist in the way that she has been doing so successfully for sixteen years with sacai.

“It couldn’t be too much Nike or too much sacai,” said Abe. “With every collaboration I do, it has to be 50/50. Once we started working together more closely, it was great to see that Nike could give me the space to make this happen.” This 50/50 partnership began with Abe going to Nike HQ in Portland and arriving back at the icons that she personally knew and loved – the Windrunner jacket, with its chevron point design – and the Nike Air Max 90. They’re both instantly recognisable as Nike icons giving Abe fertile ground to play with, twist and ultimately renew. “Nike is classic, and Sacai has always played with the idea of taking classic pieces and then creating playful and unexpected hybrids from them,” said Abe, when I met her just before the NikeLab x Sacai launch in London yesterday. “Everybody knows a cardigan and a military jacket, which I’ve converted into something different. The same with Nike – everybody knows Nike, but I wanted to take it to a different place.”

The fundamental thing about every sacai garment is the way they have deceptive depths and hidden details, embedded by surprising use of volumes of pleats, folds and drapes. Wearing a sacai piece makes you look at your reflection from 360 degrees which is why front-on catwalk images can be misleading. Abe attributes this approach to her view that clothes need to exist in real life, where “we’re looked at from all angles.” Lofty inspirations and abstract references don’t play into Abe’s moda operandi. Instead she thinks about what she’d personally like to wear. And yet what Abe likes to wear is actually technically and aesthetically advanced in terms of fabrications and pattern making, which is what makes sacai so compelling.

That same ethos guided this collaboration. The classic WindRunner jacket is dissected and amplified with plisse pleats and also converted into a panelled skirt. Nike’s Tech Fleece fabric is utilised and made up into a sweatshirt, a dress and tracksuit bottoms with billowing gatherings of ripstop fabric at the back – Nike from the front on, Sacai from the back is the simple way of summing up these hybrid garments. For the first time, Nike created a special mesh lace especially for the collection as a nod to Abe’s use of lace in her own take on femininity and in return Nike lent its technical expertise by adding bonded zippers attached without stitching. The Air Max also has a physical duality to them representative of that 50/50 partnership, with their two-tone colour ways, slip-on shape and built in tromp l’oeil wedge detailing.

The collaboration follows a NikeLab trail of exciting and non-obvious choices of designers that offer not necessarily the biggest but the most interesting of aesthetics – Jun Takahashi in his ongoing Gyakasou line, Pedro Lourenco and his balletic work-out gear and Johanna Schneider’s modular gear. This NikeLab capsule collection by sacai is ostensibly the most ‘fashion’ of them all – which isn’t to say you can’t move, run and be physically active in them.

Witness a troupe of dancers trapezing, spinning and running around a cavernous space at the NikeLab x sacai launch event last night. The point was to emphasise that these clothes are meant to move and live. This is where the common ground between Nike and sacai is really found – both want wearers of their apparel to be moving and active. “I love looking at girls walking past, and then seeing all the movement in the fabric,” said Abe. “For me, that’s kind of exciting.”

Of course there’s a real difference between walking about on a day-to-day basis and REALLY working out. “It’s great that girls can wear the collection in their own comfortable way but I did initially think that they would be difficult to wear whilst doing actual exercise or fitness because of all the fabric,” said Abe. “But when I saw the rehearsal of the London show, it was so great to see the collection being used in that way. At the same time, you can wear it in a non-active environment too as ‘fashion’ items.” The message is as with all sacai collections is versatility and functionality without any loss of aesthetic interest. If you’ve got mad skills like these dancers and gymnasts – the girl doing her hola hoop spinning was particularly mesmerising – the collection amplifies that graceful movement.

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However if you’re merely walking down the street and going about your day, these sacai x NikeLab pieces will also serve you well. I was excited to try out the pieces on the last day of Paris and back in London, I also took them out for a spin – literally. In Slo-Mo, you can really see the amount of fabric injected into the back of the crew sweatshirts as well as the way the skirts are structured and that even with my distinctly non-athletic movements, the pieces have a life of their own. It’s not “cool” to label clothes as comfortable. That implies something safe or boring. This sacai collaboration, in line with both brands’ creative output, manages to straddle this idea of being at ease with yourself with clothes that allow you to move freely. And the best thing is there’s more to come as there will also be a summer collection released in June. May the synergy keep on rolling.

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NikeLab x sacai sweatshirt and skirt worn with Simone Rocha x Topshop shirt, Jonathan Saunders sunglasses and Louis Vuitton boots

NikeLab x sacai collection out tomorrow at NikeLab store in New York, London, Paris, Milan, Hong Kong, and Shanghai and online